Eaton’s, a brief history

The Journal’s history bit from the Centre des mémoires this Sunday is about the rise and fall of Eaton’s but also the history of the Banque provinciale, seemingly offered as a francophone counterweight to the anglo incursion from Toronto.

The piece is also written as if Morgan’s (later The Bay) and Eaton’s were our only department stores, but this page describes several others that flourished in the era of grand stores a century ago, but are long forgotten.*

Not a lot of news this weekend: the Journal has a second history piece about Yves Jasmin, the chief publicist of Expo 67.

*My great-aunt Louisa Ryan was a milliner at Scroggie’s department store on Ste‑Catherine Street, before leaving Montreal to marry her fiancé who’d gone to make his fortune in backwoods British Columbia. Some day I’ll write a very Canadian novel about her.